“We just looked over the script and it’s still very early, but we’re excited by trying to do something in TV, particularly at a place like HBO, where you can have nine hours instead of two,” said Dayton.

Clowes, who wrote the project and exec produces with John Lesher, was the writer of 2001 indie film “Ghost World,” for which he and Terry Zwigoff were Oscar-nominated. He also won the Independent Sprit Award for his script of the pic that starred Steve Buscemi, Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson.

Premise of “The Landlord”: After inheriting a shabby apartment building in a remote California town, a volatile college professor with Utopian delusions drags his family into the unforgiving netherworld of small-town America.

Comicbook artist Clowes’ other credits include 2006 pic “Art School Confidential” and 2011 short “David Goldberg.”